Europe reigns at Oscars
Hollywood took a backseat at the 80th Academy Awards which saw European stars walk away with most of the honours, says Ervell E. Menezes

From left: British actor Daniel Day-Lewis, British actress Tilda Swinton, French actress Marion Cotillard and Spanish actor Javier Bardem. — Photo by AP/PTI

This time it was the European stars who scored over the Hollywood ones at the Oscars night or the 80th awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. France’s Marion Cotillard, who won the Best Actress (though now they call them actors) Oscar for her depiction of the legendary Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, was in ecstasy as she received the award, and British actor Daniel Day-Lewis knelt on one knee to take the Oscar from last year’s winner Helen Mirren (also British), who tapped him on the shoulder with the Oscar. Day-Lewis won his Oscar for the oil boom drama There Will Be Blood which is quite different from his last winner My Left Foot.

The Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress Oscars too went to Spanish Javier Badem and British Tilda Swinton. Badem won it for No Country for Old Men, a Joel and Ethan Cohen thriller, which swept most of the Oscars. The two brothers who have been shooting films since childhood "were thankful to all of you out there for letting us continue to play in our corner of the sandbox." Among their earlier efforts was called Henry Kissinger: Man on the Go, which they shot at Minneapolis airport in their school days.

But this year’s ceremony seemed to have lost a bit of zing probably because of the screenwriters’ strike, and the compere was not in the same mould as say Billy Crystal and co. Some of his jibes missed their mark but the usual fanfare was there and so were the "usual suspects" Jack Nicholson, John Travolta and co. Or may be we are getting too used to this annual spectacle which this writer saw first on TV from New York in 1978. That was the 50th Oscars when Travolta won the top acting Oscar for Saturday Night Fever and Vanessa Redgrave made a provocative acceptance (for Julia) speech on Palestine and was roundly criticised by scriptwriter Paddy Chavesky who was also on the dais later to accept an Oscar.

The clips this year were too many and rather disjointed and tended to affect the flow of the ceremony. But the icing on the cake was the 98-year-old set designer who was helped on to the stage by two actresses. He made an excellent speech. He referred to Hitch and there were clips of Rear Window and Birds with which he was involved. It was seven decades of association with Hollywood and it was roundly applauded by all. Hollywood has a way of honouring its "good old friends" and I guess it was in 2004 when the blacks made a clean sweep. This time it was the Europeans and with good reason. It is they and other immigrants who have become part of Hollywood today and who can forget their contribution to filmdom. May be we were brought up on Hollywood but we later realised the importance of European and other cinema.

Our childhood stars like Betty Hutton (Annie Get Your Gun) and Jane Wyman Magnificent Obsession) were remembered in In Memoriam and so were European giants Ingmar Bergman and cinematographer Lazslo Kovacs.

But our own Shekhar Kapur was not there. Remember his absence during the first Elizabeth? May be he did not get enough footage but he was conspicuous by his absence this time though he was given credit from those who received Oscars for Elizabeth — the Golden Age. So on to Oscar 2009, Inshallah.